Greetings all! I know it has been almost 7 months since I last posted, so my apologies for the long delay.
I always feel like I’m offering excuses for not keeping up this blog, and then I always feel like I’m always feeling like I’m offering excuses for not keeping up this blog. But I honestly have great reasons for just not having the mental capacity to sit down and write more than I’m already required to write for my degree … which brings us to the problem at hand: my degree.
Y’all … I’m almost finished. Seriously. But it has been nothing short of a sprint to the finish line. This week is my final week in my 2 summer courses, which is the ironic part about me feeling somewhat motivated to write this week because it is probably one of the heaviest weeks (assignment wise) of the summer. In one class alone I have 7 different assignments due this week which I will lament on further down below. But after this week, I’ll only have 2 more courses left to finish this thing. BTW, for those readers who don’t happen to know, I’m working on my Masters of Divinity degree, which is simply a pastor’s degree. It’s an unnecessarily long degree (90 credit hours), especially for a master’s degree. I have a few friends with MBA’s and those are what, 30 some-odd credit hours? Anyway, I digress. The point is, I’m close to finishing and maybe … maybe I can get back to a mental place to begin regularly blogging on a weekly basis. It’s not like there hasn’t been anything worth writing about, or books not worth reviewing, it’s just been insane.
Jumping back to the 7 assignments for 1 class that’s due this week – part of that is simply due to the fact that the entire program is now accelerated (8 weeks instead of 16) and the course work has not been adjusted to compensate. In fact, I would argue that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, instructor’s have actually increased the workload, and mostly with what can only be classified as “unnecessary busy work.”
Anyway, enough complaining … let me throw this out there and then get back to my class reading, writing, etc… Guys, I want to be in a bookclub. I have wanted a bookclub for a long time. Like, years. I want to be in one that either meets in person or online on a regular basis, at least monthly. I don’t care if its assigned reading or “read what you want” kind of club, I just want to be able to sit in a circle and talk about books and reading. Here’s the thing though: I’ve tried to start bookclubs in the past … multiple times. I had one do okay when we lived in Georgia, but it puttered out after about 4 meetings because folks simply don’t want to do that kind of thing anymore. But y’all … they keep publishing books so I have to imagine that there are people that read them and want to talk about them? And there has to be more than YA clubs and Alphabet Soup clubs or girly gender-bending clubs out there. I mean, where are the people who want to read hard sci-fi or classics or just a good ol’ murder mystery? Where are the grown-ups!?!? I’m in about 6 groups on Goodreads, but at the moment no one is reading anything that I want to read so I’ve been reading my own stuff. Even still … surely there is something out there?
So here’s what I want to try and do … I want to throw it out here on this blog. Maybe my trick is to kind of turn this thing into a book blog? Or feature more books? But, I want to throw it out there to you guys and see what might come of this. Do you guys think there is still a desire for a decent book club that’s not run by Reese Witherspoon, Oprah, or Emma Watson? Would any of you ever consider being in a book club?
The SouthTown Pastor 